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Rafe wrote: ↑Sat Mar 06, 2021 9:48 amAnd then you'll come this: "The Public Utility Commission is organized under the direction of three full-time appointed commissioners and the executive director, who is selected by the commissioners."

So there is zero public oversite or accountability of the commission, and no administrators are elected officials. Oversite is by the state bureaucracy only, and the commission's director is selected unilaterally by the three appointed commissioners.

I left out that part in my rant about who is responsible and who is a scapegoat, I am unable to track down who appoints the ERCOT board of Directors. Some are listed as "ex officio, non-voting" members which means they sit on this board because they hold another office that the law made them representatives on the board. The consumer representative is one of these offices. The rest represent different segments of the electric market, such as the rural electric providers or municipal retail providers or whatever. These could be elected by the segment they represent or appointed by some group that represents that segment. A good investigation of this is needed and the makeup of the board may need to be changed.

But I thought most people knew the PUC was a government agency with commissioners appointed by the governor. And since he has been in office long enough, every appointed commissioner in Texas government has been appointed by Abbott. And we need to remember that in 18 months when the election comes.

Flightmare wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 3:11 pm From the news articles I have read, your comments appear to be mostly correct. ERCOT was supposed to reduce the price as the production was turned back on, and didn't do that. So the PUC ordered ERCOT to artificially increase the price to encourage reduced usage, then ERCOT I guess "forgot" to roll back that increase for a few days. As a result, some retailers were shut out of the market (Griddy) and others have filed for bankruptcy.

Thanks for clearing it up. It means that ERCOT's board is not being used as scapegoats, but they are also not the only ones that need to be investigated and punished. You know, sometimes I think the days of tar and feathers need to be brought back for government officials who misbehave.

OneGun wrote: ↑Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:37 am

MaduroBU wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:59 pm The REPs getting hammered by ERCOT need to sue the generators who caused the mess by breaking the grid.

The problem is not solely with the generators. ERCOT allowed the market prices to explode to $9,000/MWH.

I could be wrong, but ERCOT did not allow it to explode, that would have been OK in my opinion, just market forces at work. But as I understand it, ERCOT was ordered by PUC to artificially set it that high. If I am right about the order, it is the PUC's fault. If I am wrong and it was just ERCOT, then they should be hung out to dry instead. That board is running short of people right now as they get hung out. My question is if they are being used as scapegoats or are the ones who deserve it.

03Lightningrocks wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 1:16 pmSo your bill actually only increased by 150 dollars? That is not so bad. Are the extremely high ones more the one off bills? They kind of made it sound like everyone was getting throttled for thousands of dollars. Thanks for explanation.

If you think about it, the extreme ones are definitely one-offs. The first rule is that only the unusual makes the news, so the reporters went looking for the highest they can find. They then repeat it over and over until it sounds common and people think it is a wide spread problem (kind of like how many school shootings there are).

Another way to look at it is to take a $15,000 bill (lower end of the extreme I heard about) and divide it out. Since the extreme rate was only in effect from Monday through Friday, we can estimate it at 4 days or 96 hours. That is $156.25 per hour for the whole time of the crisis. The rate went to 9$ per kilowatt-hour, which divided out says they were consuming 17.36 KWH for 96 hours straight. That is not a small home and reflects no effort to conserve energy at all, in my mind. Most people have whole house back up generators in the 10KW range, which is based on cutting some unused power if possible.

I know I am a bit of a snob (or reverse snob?) but I worry much more about the people whose bill went to $1,000 or so than the extremes like that. Of course, I have a moral outrage over the government price gouging like that when they criminally prosecute others for it. I am even more upset that the free market was working and set the top price much lower (around 2/KWH if I recall correctly) until PUC said we need to raise the rate higher artificially. I just don't have much sympathy for the people who got those extremely high bills.

philip964 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 7:04 pm I was told by someone who went to the ERCOT site that Houston and Dallas had the most percentage of customers with outages.

Where as San Antonio or Austin for example had a much lower percentage of customers who went without power. So it may be Centerpoint and who ever it is in Dallas, said "hey we will take the fall for this, shut us off"

As one difference to remember, San Antonio and Austin have city owned utilities and were not subject to the deregulation that allows you to choose your provider. Having lived under CPS service in San Antonio, I have no faith that they did something right unless the regulations required it. I support the free market concept used in Houston and Dallas, even though i know that deregulation was a misnomer and it is not a real free market.